From segregation laws to white supremacist terrorism, discover the horrific history of the Jim Crow era in these newly colorized photos.
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1 of 34Benny Oliver, a former policeman in Jackson, Mississippi, kicks Memphis Norman, an African American student who participated in a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter on May 28, 1963.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Getty Images 2 of 34In Birmingham, Alabama, Black residents mourn the deaths of four Black girls, who were killed in a white supremacist terrorist attack on the 16th Street Baptist Church on Sept. 15, 1963.The church had served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., who called Birmingham a "symbol of hardcore resistance to integration."
Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Getty Images 3 of 34The Memphis Zoo opened its doors exclusively to African Americans on a Thursday in 1959. At the time, Thursday was the only day of the week that Black people were allowed to visit.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
National Museum of African American History and Culture 4 of 34View of the damage left over after the Rosewood Massacre on Jan. 9, 1923. The predominantly Black town in Florida was burned to the ground during a seven-day race riot instigated by a white mob.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Getty Images 5 of 34Black college student Dorothy Bell, 19, waits at a downtown Birmingham lunch counter for service that never came on April 4, 1963. She was later arrested with 20 other sit-in protesters.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
AP 6 of 34Demonstrators protest against the integration of Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas in 1959.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Wikimedia Commons 7 of 34David Isom, 19, broke the color line in one of Florida's segregated public pools on June 8, 1958. His simple act of protest resulted in officials closing the facility.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Bettmann/Getty Images 8 of 34Black and white passengers on the Atlanta Transit Company trolley on April 23, 1956, after the outlawing of segregation on public transit.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Horace Cort/Associated Press 9 of 34Fifteen-year-old Johnny Gray points a warning finger at one of the two white boys who tried to force him and his sister, Mary, from the sidewalk as they walked to school in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Sept. 16, 1958.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Bettmann/Getty Images 10 of 34Children living in a sharecropper's home in West Memphis, Arkansas, in 1935. This photo was taken more than 70 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, showing just how little things had changed for Black people in America.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
New York Public Library 11 of 34Young Black prisoners chained together as they work in the fields in an unspecified location in 1903. Historians commonly refer to Jim Crow as "slavery by another name" since the racist laws made little difference for the status of Black people in the U.S.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Getty Images 12 of 34Dr. and Mrs. Charles N. Atkins, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, glance up at the segregation sign at the Santa Fe Depot in 1955.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
AP 13 of 34Six-year-old Ruby Bridges is escorted by U.S. Marshals while attending the formerly all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in 1960. Bridges was the first Black student to integrate an elementary school in the city. Today, she is an author and activist.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Wikimedia Commons 14 of 34U.S. and Confederate flags displayed on a car parked on Tennessee's Capitol Hill in Nashville, where Gov. Frank Clement met with a delegation of pro-segregationists on Jan. 24, 1956.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images 15 of 34The lynching of a Black man accused of rape in Royston, Georgia. Circa 1935.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Gamma-Keystone/Getty Images 16 of 34A Black student sits nervously in the front row of her newly integrated class in Tennessee in 1957.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Don Cravens/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images 17 of 34Racist mugshots depicting Black inmates detained in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1908. The origins of many social issues that disproportionately affect Black Americans — like mass incarceration and police brutality — can be traced back to Jim Crow.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
New York Public Library 18 of 34White students at Clinton High School in Tennessee picket their school when it becomes the first state-supported school to integrate. Aug. 27, 1956.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
AP 19 of 34Seventeen-year-old Jesse Washington was beaten, burned, and lynched by a white mob shortly after a jury found him guilty of an alleged murder in Waco, Texas, on May 15, 1916. His horrific and very public murder became known as the "Waco horror."Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Texas Collection at Baylor University 20 of 34Activist Rosa Parks sits in the front of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, after the Supreme Court ruled segregation illegal on the city bus system on Dec. 21, 1956. Parks was arrested a year before for refusing to give up her seat, which set off a successful boycott of the city buses.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Getty Images 21 of 34In 1948, retired professor George McLaurin became the first Black student to be admitted to the University of Oklahoma. But he was completely segregated from his white classmates in the classrooms, cafeterias, and restrooms on campus.⠀Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Library of Congress 22 of 34A white woman hurriedly bars the entryway as African American patrons enter the lunch counter of a downtown store in Memphis in 1961.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Bettmann/Getty Images 23 of 34During the Jim Crow era, public facilities like bathrooms, parks, and even drinking fountains were segregated between whites and non-whites. The location and date of this photo is unknown.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Bettmann Archive/Getty Images 24 of 34Elizabeth Eckford ignores screams from racist white students on her first day of school. She is one member of the Little Rock Nine, a group of African American students who were the first to attend classes at the formerly all-white Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas in 1957.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Getty Images 25 of 34A segregated drinking fountain on the county courthouse lawn in Halifax, North Carolina, in 1938.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Buyenlarge/Getty Images 26 of 34Two men talk as Tulsa's "Black Wall Street" burns behind them on June 1, 1921. This race riot, which killed up to 300 Black residents, is now known as the Tulsa Race Massacre.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Tulsa Historical Society and Museum 27 of 34A white child holds up a pro-segregation sign during protests at an unspecified location during the Jim Crow era.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Alamy 28 of 34On June 18, 1964, a white hotel manager named James Brock poured acid into a whites-only pool at the Monson Motor Lodge after Black activists jumped into the water during a "swim-in" protest.Activist Mimi Jones, who marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr., can be seen in the photo trying to avoid the toxic chemicals. St. Augustine, Florida.
Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Clennon L. King via Boston Globe 29 of 34Demonstrators outside of West End High School in Birmingham, Alabama, sing songs and cheer during an anti-desegregation protest on Sept. 10, 1963.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Bettmann/Bettmann Archive 30 of 34A wagon full of African American men, who were arrested under Jim Crow laws. This photo was taken in North Carolina in 1910.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Library of Congress 31 of 34White supremacist members of the National States Rights Party hang an effigy of Martin Luther King Jr. outside of the party's headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama, on May 6, 1963.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Bettmann/Bettmann Archive 32 of 34Young Black prisoners chained together at a Southern jail sometime in the early 1900s.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Wikimedia Commons 33 of 34A blood-splattered John Lewis, one of the original Freedom Riders, after being attacked by pro-segregationists in 1961 in Montgomery, Alabama.Colorized by Matt Loughrey.
Getty Images 34 of 34
33 Colorized Jim Crow Pictures That Depict The Real Brutality Of American Racism View GalleryMost Americans know about the Jim Crow era and the horrific racism that happened during this time. But the colorized Jim Crow pictures in the gallery above truly bring this fraught period to life.
The Jim Crow era started in America shortly after the Civil War and lasted well into the late 1960s. For about a century, white lawmakers kept racial inequality intact through policies that legally enforced segregation between white and Black people in America. It was a time of unrepentant racism that was captured in many horrific photographs from the era.
Take a look at some of the most gut-wrenching Jim Crow pictures in the gallery above — which are even more shocking in color.
A Country Divided By Slavery
Bettmann/Getty Images
A classroom in New York sits nearly empty after white students refuse to attend their desegregated school in 1964.
After four years of the Civil War between the Confederacy and the Union, reconciling the warring factions into one nation was bound to be a long-haul challenge. The contentious time period that followed would later be known as the Jim Crow era.
When discussing Jim Crow America, it's important to remember that the root cause of the Civil War was the desire of the Confederacy to uphold the enslavement of Black people — a key factor in the economic boom of the South, where slaves labored to pick cotton and harvest sugar.
After the war, the U.S. government enshrined the freedom of former Black slaves into the Constitution in the 13th Amendment. Soon after, the 14th Amendment granted citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States — including former slaves. And then the 15th Amendment gave Black men the right to vote.
But despite these protections, the country's Black population still struggled tremendously during the Reconstruction Era between 1865 and 1877.
Former slaves who were supposed to be able to relish in their newfound freedom were instead subjected to terrorism and violence by racist whites who could not accept equality with Black people.
Hate groups like The Knights of the White Camellia, the Ku Klux Klan, and The Innocents famously paraded in the streets and targeted newly enfranchised Black people to dissuade them from voting in the elections. White authorities did little to quell the violence.
Jim Crow Pictures: America's Tragedy In Photographs
Civil rights icon and late U.S. Congressman John Lewis shares what it was like growing up in the Jim Crow South.After the Civil War, white lawmakers began to enact discriminatory policies that legally denied rights to Black Americans. These would eventually become known as the Jim Crow laws.
The Jim Crow laws were a collection of state and local statutes that helped maintain racial inequality, primarily through segregation of white people and "colored people," an outdated term once used to refer to Black people and other non-whites.
These laws affected every facet of life, and their impact can be seen in the Jim Crow pictures above, some of which show Black people being harassed or even attacked by white mobs.
While it may seem shocking, the concept of segregation existed before Jim Crow — and it actually originated in the North. During the 19th century, many white people in Northern states wanted to keep themselves separate from free Black people. In fact, the first known reference to a "Jim Crow car" appeared in a Massachusetts newspaper in 1838.
However, many of these discriminatory practices were legally challenged — in some cases by free Black people — before slavery was abolished.
But after the Civil War, segregation found a renewed purpose through white lawmakers in the South, who used it to push a false "separate but equal" narrative based on race. In reality, facilities and services that were designated for Black people were frequently neglected, damaged, or subpar.
Jim Crow segregation touched every aspect of daily life, from public facilities like water fountains to leisure activities like playing ball. The extreme separation between whites and Blacks through Jim Crow laws — also known as the "Black Codes" — gave way to racist social norms at large. These unspoken rules are sometimes referred to as "Jim Crow etiquette."
For example, a Black man could not initiate a handshake with a white man because it implied they were socially equal, and Black couples weren't allowed to show affection in public because it offended white people. Breaking these racial rules typically led to violent consequences for Black people during the Jim Crow era.
According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 4,743 lynchings were recorded from 1882 to 1968. Of the total known lynchings, 72 percent were against Black victims. These numbers, the organization notes, do not account for the countless lynchings that went unreported.
Racial Inequalities Today
Wikimedia CommonsAn African American military policeman in front of the "colored" entrance in Columbus, Georgia. Circa 1942.
Although Jim Crow supposedly ended in the late 1960s, the far-reaching consequences of the racist laws of the era can still be felt today.
It's no coincidence that social inequality issues like mass incarceration, voter suppression, and police brutality disproportionately affect Black populations. The root cause of these issues can be traced back to Jim Crow.
These deep-seated challenges contribute to the current racial wealth gap in the U.S. as well. In 2016, the median family wealth for Black households was about $17,600 compared to the $171,000 median among white families. According to the Economic Policy Institute, 19 percent of Black households have zero net worth as of 2019.
As the New York Times put it: "Today's racial wealth gap is perhaps the most glaring legacy of American slavery and the violent economic dispossession that followed."
It's clear Black Americans still suffer from the impact of Jim Crow half a century after its alleged end. The influence of these laws can only be glimpsed in the Jim Crow pictures above.
After taking a look at these Jim Crow pictures, learn about the brutal lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till that galvanized the civil rights movement. Then, find out the history behind the iconic photo of Elizabeth Eckford, who was part of the Little Rock Nine.
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